W^n 



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.A^HDIDK/ESSES 



INAliGURATION OF 



WILLIAM W. FOLWELL 



PRESIDENT OF THE 



UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 



WEDNESDAY, J)ECEi[BER 23, 18(59. 



FOR THE UNIVERSITY. 



MINNEAPOLIS: 

TBIBXJNE PRINTrNG COMPANY. 

1870. 



\ 



THE ^DX)E/E1SSES 



INAUGURATION OF 



WILLIAM W. FOLWELL 



PBESIDENT OF THE 



UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 



WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1869 



FOR THE UNIVERSITY. 



MINNBAPOLIS: 

TRIBUNE PRINTING COMPANY. 

1870. 






At a meeting of the Board of Regents held August 23d, 1869, William 
W. FoLWELL, M. A., Professor of Mathematics and Civil Engineering in 
Kenyon College, Ohio, was elected President of the University. 

The following resolution was also adopted: 

Resolved, That the President elect be requested to deliver an Inaugural 
Address in the Hall of the University on the third Monday in October, 
and that he be then formally presented with the keys of the Institution. 

This ceremony was, however, at a later day postponed to the 22d of De- 
cember, the close of the first term of the Academic Year. 

The Executive Committee of the Board of Regents published the fol- 
lowing invitation in the newspapers, and also circulated a number of cop- 
ies of it through the mails: 



ST. ANTHONY, MINN., 
Dec. 1st, 1869. 

You are invited to the Inauguration of William W. Folwell, as 
President of the University of Minnesota, which takes place in the Hall 
of the University on Wednesday, the 22d inst., at 2 o'clock, p. M. 

President Folwell will hold a Reception in the same Hall from seven to 
half past nine in the evening. 
For the Board of Regents: 

J. S. PILLSBURY, 

O. C. MERRIMAN, J^Ex. Com. 

JNO. NICOLS, 



•] 



L 



• 



OI^X)E:E^ oif 33x:E:E^CISES. 



I. MUSIC, 
By the Band of the 20th U. S. Infantry. 

II. PRAYER. 
By Rev. Dr. Brown. 

III. CHORAL, 

'* Holy, Holy, Holy Lord! " by the University Choir. 

IV. INDUCTION INTO OFFICE, 
By the Hon. J. S. Pillsbury, President of the Board of Regents. 

V. MUSIC, 

By the Band. 

VI. INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 
By President Folwell. 

VII. CHORAL, 
" Cantate Domino," by the Choir. 

VIII. BENEDICTION. 



The following account of the proceedings appeared in the cohimns 
of the MinneapoHs Daily Tribune of December 24th : 

The State University— Inauguration of President Folwell— 
Interesting and Impressive Ceremonies. 

In accordance with previous announcement, the Inauguration of Col. 
Wm. W. Folwell as President of the University of Minnesota, at St. An- 
thony, took place yesterday afternoon, in the large hall of the University 
building. The day was a beautiful one, with a bright clear skyj and cool 
bracing air, and every thing seemed to augur well for the occasion. Hun- 
dreds of visitors from St. Anthony, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and surround- 
ing country were present, and long before the interesting inaugural 
ceremonies began, the hall was so crowded that more chairs had to be 
brought in and many persons even were unable to find seats at all. 

The hall was beautifully decorated with large flags^ from the Fort, 
suspended from the walls in the most tasteful manner, giving it a very 
bright and attractive appearance. At one end upon a raised platform were 
the President's table, and chairs for the Faculty, Board of Regents and 
distinguished visitors; at the other end of the hall, upon another 
platform, was a piano, with the University choir in rear, while the 
students and visitors occupied seats and chairs in the body of the hall ; 
facing the audience, was the excellent band^ of the 20th Infantry, with 
their bright red plumes and gay uniforms, enlivening the scene and en- 
tertaining the vast audience with most delightful music. 

At a little after two o'clock, the Board of Regents and the Faculty of the 
University entered the hall, and proceeded to the front, the President tak- 
ing his seat in the centre of the platform, the Board of Regents upon his 
right, and the Faculty upon his left. After all had been seated, Maj. 
Gen. R. W. Johnson, the Professor of Military Science, who conducted 
the ceremonies, arose and announced that the order of exercises would 
begin with music by the Band. After the music, the Rev. Dr. Brown, of 
St. Paul, pronounced a beautiful and appropriate prayer. 

The University choir then sang with fine effect the beautiful choral, 
" Holy, Holy, Holy Lord." 

induction into office. 

At the conclusion of the choral, Hon. John S. Pillsbury, President of 
the Board of Regents, arose, and stepped forward to induct President Fol- 
well into office, addressing him as follows : * ^ (See the address 
on page 5.) 

At the conclusion of Mr. Pillsbury 's remarks. President Folwell, who 
had been standing, replied as follows ; * ^ ^ [See page 6.] 

The band then played another air, and at its conclusion President 
Folwell arose] and proceeded to deliver his inaugural address. * - 

* "^ * Its delivery occupied about two hours. 

The choir then sang the "Cantate Domino," after which Gov. Mar- 
shall and Hon. M. H. Bunnell, both of whom are members of the Board 
of Regents, were called upon and made brief but very interesting remarks. 

The Rev. G. L. Chase, of St. Anthony, then pronounced the benedic- 
tion and thus closed the impressive and interesting inaugural ceremonies 
of the first President of our young University. 

1. By the courtesy of Maj. Gen. Sykes, U. S. A. 



I 



ADDRESS OF 

HON. JOHN S. PILLSBURY, 

PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS, 
AND REPLY OF 

PRESIDENT FOLWELL. 




PROFESSOR FOLWELL:— In my official capacity as 
President of tlie Board of Regents, I have the honor and 
the pleasure of tendering to you the greetings of the officers 
and citizens of the State of Minnesota. 

On this auspicious day as we are about to lay upon the first Pres- 
ident of our University the mantle of authority and of trust, it is 
eminently fitting that we should publicly express to him our confi- 
dence in his ability and worth, our appreciation of the value of the 
interests committed to his charge and our united desire to sustain 
him in every proper exertion for their maintenance and safety. 

Y^ou may not be familiar, Sir, with the history of this institution. 
That history includes the record of many a dark day and many a 
struggle for light and life. What with financial revulsions and 
threatened bankruptcy, we have often been ready even to surrender 
hope. Twelve years ago the people of the territory of Minnesota, 
with a clear conception of the permanent value of the highest men- 
tal and moral culture, erected the present structure. Ten long 3^ears 
it stood empty to laugh at our youthful trials. But at length 
the night of misfortune began to pass and the dawn of prosper- 
ity to brighten. Just as our land had hushed the thunder of war 
these doors began to open and these halls to echo with the voices of 
our youth. We feel deeply moved in view of the smiles of Heav- 
en, which to-day beam upon us, to render to the Great Ruler of the 
Universe our warm gratitude and humble adoration. And yet, in 



4 



6 

the fair promise of this hour, we but catch a glimmer of the long 
and brighter day which stretches out before us, when th^se halls 
shall be tilled with other and more numerous youth ; when the 
alumni of this institution shall, as we trust, honor the high places of 
our country and shall return, perhaps, with hoary locks,' to visit her 
classic halls, or amid her groves to seek their youthful haunts. And 
thus looking forward we are deeply moved by this impressive scene. 
We feel the importance of the trust laid upon him who shall go 
before these gathering throngs and by his word and deed, yes, even 
by imconscious influences^ shall mold their minds and hearts for 
evil or for good. And while we give unto your trust this building and 
these grounds, forget not that we also give to your keeping the man- 
hood and womanhood, the intellect and the conscience of the most 
highly favored youth of thi%' portion of our land. 

But in this responsibility we shall not leave you unsupported. 
Everything that can be done shall be done for your assistance. We 
have already surrounded you with an able faculty, and we shall 
continue from time to time, as the resources of the University 
increase, to add to their numbers the best talent which can be 
secured. I^or shall you be wanting in material aid. The general 
government has shown the State of Minnesota special favor, and as 
soon as her pine and her prairies, generously set apart for this pur- 
pose, have been brought into the market, her University will com- 
mand a revenue equal to the needs of the best. Considering these 
facts then, in behalf of the Board of Regents, in behalf of these 
youth whose faces before us to-day testify of their interest, in behalf 
of the citizens here present, in behalf of the whole people of Min- 
nesota, whom we as Regents represent — allow me to assure you, sir, 
that you begin your career amid deep confidence, high hopes and 
earnest wishes for your success and for the success of the University. 
May you, by wise counsels and by the blessing of God, succeed in 
realizing those hopes and in justifying that confidence. 

Allow me, in conclusion, sir, in behalf of and in the name of the 
Board of Regents, to renew to you our pledge of sympathy and co- 
operation, to present to you the keys and the charter, and to welcome 
and introduce you as Peesident of the Univeesitt of Minnesota. 

To this address President Folwell replied : — 

Mr. President of the Board of Regents — Sir : — I receive at 
your hands these keys and this charter, the symbols of that author- 



ity and of those duties to which the honorable body over which you 
preside, has been pleased to call me. 

I return with profound thankfulness your greeting, and theirs, 
and that of the people of this great State. Chiefly I feel grateful 
for those expressions of esteem and confidence you have used, not 
towards myself alone, but also towards my honorable colleagues of 
the University Faculty. It will be our endeavor to justify that con- 
fidence, because we know well that without your sympathy, your 
active, unfailing support, our usefulness will be confined to very 
narrow limits. 

Surrounded then, and reinforced by these skilful and experienced 
educators, armed with your authority, assured of your confidence 
and friendship, commended by you to the people whose servants we 
are, and finally invoking with you that Divine help and furtherance 
without which all human efforts are vain, I will proceed with trem- 
bling, but not without hope, to the work you have set me to. 



mAUGURAL ADDRESS 



BY 



PRESIDENT FOLWELL. 




{.^(^ITE part which any individual plays in to-day's ceremonies 
is a small thing. These proceedings derive their impor- 
tance and dignity from the occasion of them. To-day we 
celebrate the foundation of the University ; its inauguration, 
long ago an assured fact with those whose labors' sacrifices and fore- 
sight liave made it sure. It is hope, not memory, which inspires 
our hearts and dictates our utterances. We are gathered to-day in 
no historic audience-chamber ; we employ no ancient symbols nor 
formulae ; no effigies upon canvass or in marble look down from 
these walls to remind us of the great and good of olden time, 'whose 
lives and labors have reflected a glory never to fade upon a vener- 
able Alma Mater: but looking forward to the future, amid scenes as 
yet unused to academic displays, we celebrate and emphasize, with 
song and praise and benediction, beginnings. Ours is the hopeful 
toil of the sower, not the consummate fruition of the harvest. We 
thank God for foundations laid here which may endure to the end 
of the world, to the blessing and upbuilding of all generations which 
shall follow ours. We may rejoice with exceeding great joy over 
the opportunities which our children, and our children's children 
shall here be given, of learning those sciences which furnish and adorn 
manhood and womanhood, and those arts which enrich and eman- 
cipate communities, and make small states great. 

How to plan, how to build, how to administer the University so 
as to meet the just demands ^f our own and coming times, are the 
questions which now occupy and oppress us. It would be vain for 
me to attempt to divert your minds this hour from the occasion of 
this assemblage and these public acts. 



10 

At this initial moment of our enterprise, it is clear tliat we ought 
rightly to apprehend its proper aim, scope, and sphere. Proposing 
to build here an University, we ought to be agreed both as to what 
we mean by that term, and what we do not mean. 

Though we build for the future, we plan from the past, towards 
which let us glance before we attempt definitions. 

It has often been charged with much petulance against the older 
American Colleges that they were organized, and have always been 
operated, in the interest of the Church and the clerical profession. 
This statement is no doubt true, but it is far from being a just cause 
of reproach. Clergymen organized and managed with most heroic 
sacrifices the old Colleges, because they alone, as a class, appreci- 
ated the value of liberal culture and higher education. All honor 
to the noble men who planted Harvard, and Yale, and Brown, and 
Columbia, and Princeton, and Oberliu, to the glory of God and the 
upbuilding of the Church. 

But it is to be remarked that these venerable institutions, although 
founded as training schools for the ministry, did not at the first pro- 
pose, never have undertaken, and do not now offer to furnish, as 
Colleges, professional education proper. They were, and continue 
to be, institutions of general and liberal culture in science and 
literature. 

The College graduate of Colonial times, preparing for clerical 
functions, passed his apprenticeship in the study and under the 
tuition of some scholarly parish minister. 

When some clergyman, apt to teach as well as to preach, assembled 
two, three, or more candidates under his roof, formed them into a 
class, and taught them after a certain scheme, a beginning was made 
which soon developed into the Theological Seminary. The econ- 
omy of the new plan, upon which two or three experts could instruct 
a large number of candidates, over the old one which required as 
many masters as pupils, was too obvious to escape the notice of a 
class of thrifty, practical men accustomed to organize and constitute. 

Long after the establishment of the Theological Seminary, law- 
yers and physicians contined to acquire their professional education 
in the offices of their preceptors. I think the physicians were the 
next in order to discover the feasibility and economy of the profes- 
sional school. So rapidly were the needed methods and appHances 
invented and adopted, that not a single generation elapsed between 
the establishment of the first Medical Colleges, and the time when 
they absorbed all candidates for the medical Doctorate. 



11 

The laws schools came later, for of all professional men the law- 
yer is the most conservative. Qideta non movere is ever his watch- 
word and motto. It is within the recollection of men still young, 
that the Law School has got on to solid footing, and become recog- 
nized as the necessary and indispensable pathway to the legal 
profession. 

By this time the secret was fairly abroad. It was in the air, and 
began to infect all classes. The modest school master caught it, 
and began " with 'bated breath and whispering humbleness " to ask 
for the foundation of schools in which he might acquire the princi- 
ples and processes of his craft, before beginning the practice of it 
upon human bodies and immortal souls. Be it said to the credit of 
our age and country that this request has received a certain though 
feeble response. The Normal School now sends the primary 
teacher to his work with some knowledge of what is to be done ; 
but the High School teacher, the Academic or Seminary teacher, 
and the College professor, still learn their business in the class room. 
A very accomplished extemporaneous preacher, being asked by 
what means he acquired his skill, replied, " by ruining half a dozen 
good congregations." I suppose many a good school is either 
ruined or greatly damaged in preparing a teacher for his work. 

More fortunate than the teacher, are the railway and the mining 
engineer, the chemist and the metallurgist who step at once from our 
Polytechnic Schools into honorable and lucrative positions, their 
science and scientific training being found to more than compensate 
for any temporary lack of manual skill and practical dexterity. 

But the demand for technical education is no longer confined to 
those subjects and classes generally spoken of as professional. The 
Commercial and Industrial classes have already raised a cry which 
can neither be hushed up nor ignored. As to a very remarkable phe- 
nomenon indicative of this new demand I would point to that great 
array of so-called Business or Commercial Colleges, which within 
the past ten years have flashed upon the country with all the glory 
of gilt sign-boards and polychromatic placards. While, as I think, 
there is large room for criticism upon the methods and management 
of these institutions, and although our solid business men are still 
chary of their countenance and support, it is certain that the educa- 
tor can no longer ignore these schools as signs of the times,clearly fore- 
shadowing a serious, organized demand on the part of the commer- 
cial classes for technical education. So extensive and rapid has been 
the development of our foreign and inland commerce, and so com- 



12 

plicated have they become with questions of currency, exchange, 
and the customs of the trades, that the accounts of great houses are 
thrown unavoidably into the hands of expert accountants who fre- 
quently understand their condition in detail better than the proprie- 
tors. It is not strange, then, that young men ambitious to occupy 
positions of such respectability and influence, have eagerly grasped 
at the first means ofiered, however inadequate, of qualifying them- 
selves in advance for their work. But my present object is 
answered, if these novel institutions are allowed to be indicative of 
a serious call for technical education on the part of the commercial 
classes. 

Last of all, a large body moving slowly, but with irresistible 
momentum, come the industrial classes, the toilinsj millions who 
wring from the earth and her products the subsistence of the race 
— demanding a schoolmaster. 

It is true that the cry of these classes for more light was heard 
long ago in America, but without eloquent tongues and facile pens 
to multiply and re-echo it, it was lost in the air — vox et proeterea 
nihil. It might yet be sounding unheeded, had there not 
come a time when we all saw, by the light of Wars' devouring 
flames how the salvation of pur nation lay in the keeping of these 
hard-handed working-men. It was in the supreme horn* of the 
nation's peril, when its very name had been mentioned by a foreign 
prime minister as out of date, when the ranks of the armies lately 
filled from the very flower and bloom of our farmers and artisans, 
had been cut down and shortened by a bloody campaign ; when the 
call for volunteers was beating in every village of the land ; it was 
then that the American Congress hastened to bestow upon the 
industrial classes of the country that magnificent endowment con" 
veyed by the Agricultural College Bill. With the passage of that 
Act, the demand I am speaking of, culminated. Since that time no 
one has held it in supposition, but as one to be met and answered. 

]N"ever has a more troublesome problem been thrust upon educa- 
tors. I think we must confess that we have not yet reached a final 
solution. We know very well how to take young men and train 
them in schools to be clergymen, physicians, lawyers, engineers, 
accountants, chemists and miners, but we cannot yet so deftly pro- 
duce you farmers and blacksmiths and carpenters; spinners, dyers 
and weavers; millers, moulders and machinists, and so on. 

It must be understood that this new demand is an immense and 
far-spreading one, and one which no single institution, unless it be 



13 

vastly richer than any yet founded in America, can hopefully to meet. 
Take the Department of Agriculture for illustration. Agriculture 
is K word of wide comprehension including a great variety of mat- 
ters which together form a whole, but each of which demands a 
special and elaborate treatment. Among farmers we class growers 
of grains and grasses, planters of textile products, sugar anci tobacco, 
stock growers, dairymen, market gardeners, fruit growers and 
tree culturists, seed growers and florists. 'No other profession 
demands so wide a range of scientific knowledge and practical man- 
ual skill as does Agriculture. The completely furnished agricul- 
turist must know the chemistry of earth, air, fire and water, the 
structure and properties of plants, the natural history of domestic 
animals, and the principles of breeding and raising them, and the 
cure of their diseases. He must know the use of many tools, and 
be able to test them upon mechanical principles. He will need to 
understand several branches of manufacture. He ought to be law- 
yer enough to keep out of litigation. He would need to know in 
particular the law of contracts, of highways and ditches, of tenures 
and of adverse possession, and he should be no unskillful accountant. 

It is not strange then that the school-master has been staggered 
by the huge load so suddenly thrtist upon him. 

The problem of agricultural education is one of peculiar difficulty 
on account ot this well known and much lamented fact, that while 
farmer's sons are rushing by thousands into the professions, into 
business, seeking all sorts of agencies, and clerkships, neither farm- 
er's sons nor anybody's sons in large numbers, are asking seriously 
for thorough scientific agricultural education. I am informed by 
high authority that out of the 600 young men now attending the 
Cornell University, not over iui^aen expect to become practical farm- 
ers. I fear this state of things must long continue. So long as there is 
open to young men the prospect of a name and a home, of a high social 
position to be won with clean hands and unsoiled garments by head- 
work, and without capital, the learned professions, so called, will con- 
tinue to absorb the best blood and brains of the country. Fondness 
for mechanical pursuits and indoor work, will turn many others to 
become artisans, who likewise need but little capital to start upon. 
It must be confessed that our thoroughly educated young Bachelor 
of Agriculture, with all his science and all his zeal, would be sadly 
off here without the capital sufficient to buy, subdue and stock his 
farm. In fact the newly arrived emigrant with his few and simple 
wants, would have much the advantage of him. 



/< 



14 

We have not yet in America any such deaiand for educated agri- 
culturists as exists in Europe; and may the day be lar distant when 
there shall be any such demand. In Europe, rich lords and great 
proprietors, holding a large share of the soil in immense estates, are 
very glad to employ professional agriculturists as stewai-ds and over- 
seers. This furnishes the opportunity for the graduate of the 
Agricultural College to practice his profession, without either land 
or capital ol his own. Frequently, also, sons of the great proprie- 
tors devoting themselves to the management of the estates attend 
upon the agricultural schools, in which case these gentry are kept 
in better quarters and on daintier fare than their fellow-students of 
lowly birth. The governments of Europe employ a very large 
number of experts as foresters, gardeners, and game keepers. 

These considerations, while they furnish no reason for doubting 
the feasibility of agricultural education, do, as I think, constitute a 
just excuse for its slow development, and they very clearly indicate 
that the American Agricultural College must have a peculiar organ- 
ization, a home-grown shape adapted to the demands of the times 
and to the relations of American rural economy. 

Although the development of the American Agricultural College 
has been slow, yet excellent beginnings have at length been made. 
The experiments made in Massachusetts, Illinois, and particularly 
in Michigan, suggest several lines upon which it may take place. 
The early attempts at forming Agricultural Schools in the State of 
!New York and elsewhere have shown also by what courses it cannot 
take place. These latter experiments prove very clearly that we must 
furnish better material for such schools than the sons of the wealthy, 
living in cities, sent from home to remove them from temptation and 
idleness. Such things I am aware would not be said by one 
who desired merely to glorify this subject. They who honestly and 
heartily wish success to the Agricultural College will prefer to meet 
all difficulties at the outset. Let none, however, doubt the feasi- 
bility of the Industrial Education, audits final and abundant success. 

" Have patience,"— says England's Laureate,— 

"This fine old world of ours is but a child, 
Yetin t-he go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs : there is a hand that guides." 

My design in drawing this hasty sketch of the rise and progress 
of professional education, is to have it appear, how alongside 
and independent of our common schools, our academies and col- 
leges, there has been steadily growing up in this country another 



15 

sort of educational institutions having a peculiar office, and answer- 
ing certain other additional demands. Receiving joung men with 
such furnishing as the schools or the College may have given them, 
these new schools undertake merely to fit them for those arts or 
professions to which they intend to devote their lives. They pre- 
suppose the candidates to have been already trained up through 
childhood and youth to manhood, and to understand sufficiently for 
their age the duties and obligations of citizenship, morality, and 
religion. Tliey have no dealings with boys, but instruct young men 
pursuing voluntarily and therefore zealously, favorite studies. 

These schools have in some instances been established upon sep- 
arate foundations, but more frequently they have been associated 
more or less closely with the older and richer Colleges. The econ- 
omy of so associating them was long ago obvious. It was 
apparent from the first that the same chemist could instruct at once 
candidates for medicine, mining, manulacture, and agriculture ; the 
same professors of Intellectual Philosophy, Logic, Ethics, &c., could 
lecture to members of many schools at once ; the same illustrative 
apparatus, the same observatory, library, museum would serve for 
all. A common government could regulate the general concerns 
and sanction by its authority all public acts. 

Such a federation of professional schools one might say would be 
the Universit3\ Most probably it would be merely the skeleton of 
the University. Those dry bones must be clothed upon and 
informed with an animating spirit to present the living, moving 
body. There must be some common bond to unite the many 
in one. 

I think it is generally admitted and deplored that the standard of 
piofessional qualifications has been much degraded of late years. 
Young men of perhaps a fair common school or academic education are 
missed from their homes during parts of two or three years, each to 
return with a diploma of Doctor of Medicine or Bachelor of Laws, 
and with such hasty and superficial furnishing, offer their services 
to the public. The schools of technology detain their pupils longer, 
and certainly train them more thoroughly than do the colleges of 
medicine and law, but there is probably some just ground for the 
frequent complaints we hear of " kid glove engineering." 

We are not content that the graduates possess merely certain 
tricks of the trade. It may chance that our ailment, lawsuit, or 
engineering problem is not just such an une as the books describe, 
and the teachers have shown how to heal, manage, or solve. 



16 

What we demand then, is, not ruks, but principles; not mere 
tricks of art and sleight of hand, but science ; science which .explains 
and authenticates art; which makes men masters in their work, and 
not mere imitators and operatives. There is a strong tendency in 
these times to specialties, and it will do for men of generous and 
catholic training, as Michelet says, to *' sow the furrow ot a strong 
specialty with the seeds of all the sciences ;" but his specialty makes 
the ignorant theologian a bigot, the ignorant physician a quack, and 
the ignorant lawyer a pettifogger. "We need to put a solider basis 
of science not only under technical arts and learned professions 
but under commerce, our government, and our social relations. We 
are building our great national fabric according to the rule of thumb. 
Our best thinkers fail to devise for us a financial policy, by which 
the people may most safely lift the war debt. We find ourselves 
mere empirics and journeymen at handling the terrible social prob- 
lems which the war, the migration of races, and the sudden growth 
of great cities are thrusting upon us. 

I think then we have discovered what is that informing spirit 
which is to give life to the limbs and elements of the University; 
which can fuse, cement, and compact them into a harmonious 
organization. It is Science. 

Such a federation of schools as I have mentioned, embracing 
potentially all subjects of human and practical interest, teaching 
always with relerence to principles, occupying ever a attitude of 
investigation ; knowing no favorite studies; at all times thoroughly 
imbued with the scientific spirit ; that is the University. 

I speak of science in no narrow, physical, utilitarian sense. The 
metaphysical sciences will be equally dear to the common Alma 
Mater. Fond as we Americans are of building, proud as we are of 
our victories over nature, by land and sea, we still find our dearest 
action and interest in human nature. ^^ Homo sum f^ said Terence, 
humani nihil a me alienum jputoP We too, are men, and 
indifierent to nothing which pertains to man. The University will 
teach moral science, the ground and sanction of individual conduct, 
and social science, which comprises the principles governing men in 
communities. Teaching the sciences of nature and of human 
nature she may, (why may she not ?) teach also the science of God ; 
theology, — so far as our knowledge has become science. Dog- 
matic theology she cannot meddle with, it being something apart 
from and additional to science ; but the history of religion, as well 
as the history of art or literature, may fall within her sphere. 



17 

We might, then, sum up our deiinition of the University in those 
words, ah'eady classic, of our generous countryman, as an " institu- 
tion in which any person can find instruction in any study," it being 
presumed that the distinguished author of the legend intended by 
the woids" any study" to mean any science. 

It is clearly within the scope of the University to teach all the 
sciences, but it never will be possible for her to teach all the arts. 
A lady in Philadelphia has been to the pains of making up a cata. 
logue of 638 professions, trades, and crafts, which, in her opinion, 
women can practice as well as, or better than men. I suppose we may 
add many more, which men alone or only women can profitably 
pursue. Now^ no school can undertake to teach a thousand trades ; 
and if selections are to be made, the weakest, however worthy in. 
themselves, must go to the wall. There is danger, I think, not of 
over-estimating the importance of schools, but of misconceiving their 
their proper function. Schools furnish us but a very small part of 
the knowledge we possess, and the value of what knowledge we get 
from them lies in its being more or less systematic — that is scien- 
tific. There never will be a time when schools can instruct econom- 
ically in any large number of manual operations, whether of the 
field or the shop. The farmer must learn to drive the plow on the 
land he tills, the engine driver must mount the foot-board, the sailor 
must learn the ropes on deck and aloft, the printer must stand up 
to his case, the book-binder tO' his bench, the blacksmith must don 
the leather apron and build his fire on the forge. All of them will 
resort to the schools for knowledge of the mother tongue, of the 
human body and how to use and care for it, of numbers, of nature 
in her manifold forms, and of the laws of human conduct and social 
life. I think it greatly to be regretted that we have no good system 
of apprenticeship in this country. For lack of it we are obliged 
to import our first class mechanics and artisans. I do not believe 
any system of schools can ever replace it. The University, then, 
will do best, if attending to its proper work, the cultivation and 
inculcation of science, it do not neglect this for the less worthy 
and less important task of teaching mere tricks of trade. The result 
will be the elevation of the trades into professions, the multiplica- 
tion of iiiventions, and the diffusion of the most useful knowledge. 

It may be necessary for the University to teach certain arts in 
order to inculcate and illustrate the sciences, but her processes will 
always be costly, and from a commercial point of view, extravagant. 



18 

I trust that, now, there remains no longer any room for the very 
common mistake of the University as being merely ^n overgrown col- 
lege. It is not numbers which give character to the one or the other. 
We have seen that as their development has been independent, so 
likewise are their spheres and objects different. The work of the 
college is to train up youth and prepare them, not to practice a pro- 
fession, but to enter upon the study of it. 

The University then receives them and instructs them 
in the principles, and to some extent in the practice of the 
callings they have chosen. She presumes them to bring such 
acquirements as fit them to receive her instruction. She offers to 
teach, within reason, whatever useful science they wish to learn, 
presuming always that the near approach of manhood and its duties 
will be sufficient stimulus to diligence, and that the best di&cipline is 
to be got when the least is said about it. If consistent with her 
theory, the University will not be charged with the maintainance of 
students, nor will she interfere in their conduct, further than to for- 
bid and punish whatever acts are injurious to good order, or scan- 
dalous to her name. She will always assume that they who resort 
to her are capable of providing for their wants and of governing 
their passions and appetites. If she depart from these rules it will 
be from temporary necessity. 

The college on the other hand is lalse to its duty and theory if it 
do not attend to the physical and moral needs of the immatui-e 
youth whom it undertakes to train up in the way they should go. 
Removing them from the home and its influences, it is bound to 
replace the family government and relationship so far as lies in her 
power. For my part I sincerely deplore the falling off, of late 
years, in the good government of our collegiate communities. The 
academic freedom so proper to the mature University student is no; 
the thing for college boys in their teens. 

Too often is the parental control of the government disarmed or 
supplanted by the public sentiment of a- community of inexpe- 
rienced and irresponsible youth. This comes of a mingling of the 
College and University methods, a thing which works mischief, and 
only mischief. 

All University studies being in a manner optional, it is evident 
that she has no immediate interest in the so-called educational prob- 
lem of the day : " whether any studies should be pursued for the 
sake of mental discipline, or whether discipline should be got in 
following favorite optional studies." The college is much more 



19 

nearly concerned with this question. It has some interest for iib 
here, who, pending the accumuhition of our funds and the full equip- 
ment of the professional departments, are enga.ized in what is really 
academic and collegiate work. Let us therefore, for a moment, 
attend to it. The matter is much simplified by distinguishing the 
class of students to whom it rightly relates. 

We have seen that the University student has no interest in it. 
IS^either have the pupils of the lower schools, engaged as they are 
in learning those elements which all agree to be indispensible to 
every age and condition of life. There remain, then, only those 
youth who, having passed from the common schools, are to be put 
upon a course of higher education preparatory either to the Univer- 
sity or to immediate entrance into business. 

Now it is clear that these inexperienced youth are not competent 
to decide for themselves upon a course of study. If all were 
optional, and some were hard and otliers easy, we all know which 
would be the favorite studies. I suppose one reason why the young 
people have parents and teachers is, that such matters may be 
decided for them. 

The question then stands, not what courses of study shall the 
youth choose most wisely, but what ones ought parents and teach- 
ers to set out and require them to follow. Yery few boys and girls 
under eighteen are fit to make choice of a life pursuit ; and premature 
choice is injurious to character and fatal to wholesome training. Of 
all shirks and ne'er-do-weels in college you may put down for the 
most thorough paced those young men who were started in short 
jackets to study for some particular calling They are contin- 
ually saying of one or another study, ''of what use will this be 
to me when I am a minister, a lawyer or a doctor," neglect- 
ing in their short-sightedness those things which wiser men 
know to be for their best good. Nor can it be right for a parent 
prematurely and arbitrarily to prescribe the future profession of his 
child ; it will rather be his duty to give him that general training and 
equipment which may be as useful in one calling as another, leaving 
him to choose for himself. The instances of remarkable gifts deter- 
mining in early childhood the calling of the man are too rare to 
furnish any rule. , 

If then the teacher is to prescribe a curriculum, we may inquire 
upon what principles he ought to do it. 

We do not educate children for their own sake merely, but for 
the sake of the family also. Society, too, has an interest" in the 



20 

matter; and so the question is no longer one of exjDert operatives, 
clever artists, sharp men of business, eloquent vrriters, but^ whether 
there shall be good neighbors in the land, and intelligent citizens, 
honest and capable judges, incorruptible jurymen, wise legislators, 
prudent executives. Every parent who proposes to thoroughly edu- 
cate his boy ought to consider himself in a manner the steward and 
servant of society. " 'No man livethto himself, and no man dieth to 
himself;" which the sage of Concord phrases j 

** All are needed by each one 
Nothing is fair or good alone." 

This being granted, I am prepared to admit that the aim ayd 
object of higher education should be in the best sense ot the term 
practical. I would never compel boy nor girl to drudge and agon- 
ize over any study as a mere gymnastic. There should ever be held 
out a worthy motive, a noble and practical motive for every lesson 
and exercise of the school. . What shall that motive be ? 

Aristippus — so runs the old Greek anecdote — having 
been asked what things boys ought to learn, said, " those things 
which they will practice when they become men." No later think- 
er has stated the point more clearly nor lairly ; but the* old Greek 
has been sadly misunderstood, as if instead of saying men he had 
said workmen. 

Then let boys learn those things which they will practice when 
they become men, and girls the things which they will practice 
when they grow up to womanhood. And what things will the 
American boy practice when he grows up to be a man ? He will 
bj farmer or artisan, physician or lawyer, preacher, teacher, or engi- 
neer ? Yes, some one of these, and let him be no " striker," bung- 
ler nor empiric. But is this all ? The American boy growing up 
to manhood is to be something more than a workman, whether with 
hands or brains. He will be friend and neighbor, a member of 
society, of a family, of the church, and will practice the duties of 
these relations. "What is more he will be a citizen of his State and 
of the great Kepublic. As such he wall be called upon to give his 
vote upon questions of policy worthy the genius of great lawgiv- 
ers, and which in monarchical countries would be confined to cabi- 
nets and cou,ncil chambers ; as for instance such a one (we cannot 
here enter upon it,) as that of the relations or religion to our com- 
mon schools, of which a leading journal of the day says " a tempest 
is rising which will rock the republic to its very foundations." 

The American boy will not be merely a voter. He should be fit 



21 

to be voted for, and to take up, at the bidding of his fellow citizens, 
the duties and responsibilities of public service. It will not do, 
then, in America, to scrimp and narrow higher education down to 
the beggarly limits of mere individual demand; nor will it do here in 
Minnesota, where farmers, lumber-dealers, and hardware merchants 
are framing the statiites of a great University. 

Let the Republic learn a lesson — she has taken many a one — from 
an old world monarchy. In Prussia and other German States, the 
government, under advice of the hitrhest educational authority, pre- 
scribes not merely what studies shall be taught in the high schools, 
but in what order and amount they shall follow, and the very num- 
ber of hours per week that shall be devoted to each, and iinallv 
tests the work by the most rigorous examinations conducted b} 
persons other than the teachers. And the justilication set up by the 
authorities for such arbitrary- and despotic legislation is just this : in 
order that the youth may not be trained up in any selfish, 
haphazard, utilitarian way, as if intended to be mere operatives, but 
that they shall be so instructed in science, language, literature and 
even religion, as to be lit not merely for private duties, but for the 
public and social relations of lile. If monarchs and aristocrats arbi- 
trarily impose such a scheme upon subjects, what ought not the 
sovereign people of a free country to demand for themselves ? 

We are ready then for the question: What kind of studies shall 
we require the youth to pursue in the schools ? 

The object of education is as the word implies, " to draw out the 
man." We come into the world not merely destitute of knowledge, 
but of consciousness also. The child's first lesson is to learn itself 
and the use of its limbs and organs. We next learn to know other 
persons, and things, and then we learn what is given us to know 
of the unseen world. 

An education, then, whether in or out of school, has these ends, 
and these only, to make men to know themselves body and soul, to 
know nature and human nature, and ''to feel after God if haply they 
may find him, being not far from every one of us." 

AYe will put into our curriculum then. Physiology and Psychol- 
ogy ; science of the body and science of the soul. Then numbers, 
geography,, and the grammar of the natural sciences. These stud- 
ies teach us of ourselves and the visible creation. Those which 
unfold the nature of man, and his relations, have been happily 
called the hu?nanities and are chiefly history, literature and the key 
and entrance to them both, lano:ua«:e. Fromhistorv we learn what 



22 

men have done , from literature what they have thought. We do 
not cling to the past in order to reproduce it, but because we cannot 
spare its lessons. We cannot spare its examples of heroism, martyr- 
dom, patriotism, valor, love. Unhappy will that nation be 
which cuts itself off* from the past. As well might a seaman throw 
overboard his compass and charts, and resolve to steer his ship by 
chalk marks on her taffrail, 

I have said that language is the key to history and literature. 
Without this key let no one hope to enter their most sacred and 
fruitful precincts. 

But language has claims of its own, being itself a science, and 
what is more, has been ranked by so great an authority as Max- 
Mueller, of Oxford, a natural science. Regarded as a product of the 
human spirit, shaped and conditioned by the organs of the human 
body, language is altogether the most remarkable phenomenon of 
human existence. The human body, so " fearfully and wonderfully 
made," is mere lumber compared with that marvelous machinery, 
which conveys from man to man, from nation to nation, and from 
a2;e to age tfie inmost workings of the invisible, intangible soul. 
Men will never cease to bo curious about this wonderful instiument, 
which chiefly marks his rank as the " roof and crown " of creation, 
which makes society possible, and which unites and distinguishes 
nations. To handle this instrument deftly, to make it serve its pur- 
pose of telling the truth and nothing but the truth, demands more 
knowledge, skill and practice than any art ; more than to wield the 
pencil of the painter, the engraver's burin, the sculptor's chisel, and 
this in spite of the immense hereditary bias, 'of- all ■ we 
bring to the task. Language, then, will never cease to hold a high 
place in all educational schemes. And to know and be a master of 
language, a man must study other languages than his own. Goethe 
most profoundly said : '' He that has not learned a foreign lan- 
guage knows nothing of his own." A double reason, then, leads 
educators to employ the Greek, the Latin, the German, and the 
French. Each has its literature and history ; each has its peculiar 
influence upon the English of the learner. 

I must be allowed to praise here, the admirable judgment and 
liberality of those who laid the foundations of this institution, in 
making generous provisions for teaching languages, the ancient, the 
modern, and last not least, our own peerless, cosmopolitan English. 

There remains only to be added to our curriculum natural theol- 
ogy, which after all might be a branch of natural history. 



23 

It is worth while to note in passing, that the conflict whicli for the 
last few years has been waging here in America between partisans 
of classical and sciontitic conrses, between the old education and the 
new, is no new thing. It began in Germany more than fifty years 
ago. During the la})se of the first half of this century, repeated 
attempts were made under the most favorable circumstances and 
and w^ith the most august patronage to establish and conduct schools 
for the higher education of business men, artisans, and farmers, dis- 
pensing with the ancient languages. The results are, that most of 
the experiments were total failures ; some, carried on in connection 
with classical schools, have, maintained an existence. For those 
which survived on independent foundations, in Prussia, the govern- 
ment, by its minister of education, in 1859, issued a set of final reg- 
ulations which put down Latin to be recited from three to eight 
hours a week for all the school weeks in a course v.f nine years. 
Modern languages, English, French and German replace Greek in 
these so-called "real" or scientific schools. 

I do not remember to have seen any agricultural or scientific 
course proposed in this country which does not embrace the study 
of at least one foreign language. Still all I would insist upon is 
that by some means those 3^outh whom we undertake to educate' 
thoroughly, be trained in the use of language. If this practical end 
can be reached by way of the modern, easier and surer than by the 
ancient languages, we may all heartily rejoice. Success then, to the 
" 'New Education," if it can win it. 

But it will very likely be said, '' the curriculum proposed for 
these youth is nothing new, fur it is essentially that of the old col- 
leges." Yes, very nearly that ; almost identical with the college 
courses of thirty years ago, before they had become overloaded with 
all sorts of ill-assorted, incoherent additions. It is a curse of our 
smaller colleges, that with small means and few instructors they 
undertake more work than they can possibly perform well. 

With the establishment of the University on its proper ground, a 
reform will inevitably be demanded in the management of those 
institutions. A few of the older and richer ones will assume the 
University character, as some have already done. But the great 
mass, without doubt, will be forced to return to their oiiginal and 
natural position as secondary schools. They will curtail their 
courses instead of further extending them. They will resume the 
duty of providing that family government and parental disci- 
pline which they retain in theory, but which long ago fell into dis- 



24 

use. Such schools maj, and as many think, ought, to be distinct- 
ively religious, and if private, will be all the better for enjoying the 
sponsorship of reputable christian bodies. 

We should, therefore, have a three-fold system Of education. 1st, 
The common schools. 2d, The colleges or secondary schools, ,3d, 
The University. 

The common schools of America have always been largely gra- 
tuitous. They w^ill by and by be everywhere free in that sense. A 
grand thought it is that no child shall ever be born in the State of 
Minnesota, but shall be free to take without price the elements of 
good learning. These schools will always remain, in some sort, 
public, and under civil control. I hope presently to show that the 
University must also be the care and creature of the State. And 
the reasons I shall give for that conclusion will almost necessarily 
compel the further admission that the State must in some manner 
support and control the secondary schools ; and this I think it. can 
do without trespassing upon any private right, oiFending religious 
sentiment or violating any American principle. I know not how 
this proposition may be received by our educational men or by the 
people, but I think I ought to make it. • 

If ever any such system of secondary schools shall be organized, I 
feel certain that it must provide among others such a course of 
study as I have mapped out for the college or higher academy, a 
course which is preparatory and properly preparatory to the Univer- 
sity. I would myself have the courses prescribed in detail by law. 
I do not think the public secondary school would, or ought wholly 
to supersede the private denominational colle2:es. There will 
always be a large number of sons and daughters of transient per- 
sons, orphans and others, who will need or prefer the discipline of a 
family school, and I would never shut private competition out of any 
field of work, which it could profitably occupy. 

The economy of such secondary high schools or colleges will be 
at once apparent, if we but mention, that the courses of study being 
few and limited, a moderate number of instructors could attend to 
a great many students, that no elaborate apparatus, museum, nor 
library would be essential to their successful operation. The gain 
would be immensely increased so soon as we should be able to rel- 
egate to these schools those studies which now form the body of 
work for the first two years in our ordinary American colleges. It 
is a clear case that such a transposition must by and by be made. 
For certain reasons not necessary, nor advisable, to name here the 



reading of classical authors, and the study 'A' the ])ure mathematics 
have become much less valuable than formerly. In tact, the cause 
I aUiide to has driven the best methods of culture out of use. How 
immense the gain, then, if a youth, could remain at the hiah 
school, or the academy, residing in his liome, until he had 
rejiched a point, say, somewhere near the end of Sophomore yetu- 
having gone over all those studies whicli as a boy he ought to study 
" under tutors and governors." Then let the boy, grown up to be 
a man, quit the college, and emigrate to the University, there to 
enter upon the work of a man, to be master of his time and studies, 
enjoying perfect " academic freedom," keeping only to the rule, of 
so using his own as not to harm another. No man can be a scholar 
till he has learned to be his own teacher. This may be that time of 
trial through which every young man must pass in order to prove 
liim, whether he will be a true man or no. 

The CoUeo^e may be denominational, but the University must be 
secular. The Church certainly has no sufficient motive, and as things 
are, cannot command the means to erect and control it. The inter- 
est of the Church in science is an indirect and secondary one, and is 
in results rather than in methods. What she is chiefly concerned 
in is, that " children be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a 
christian life." Her efforts, then, ought to be exerted upon children 
and youth, so far i^s she will interfere in education at all. When she 
shall have carried the gospel and the elements of civilization to all 
accessible heathen, it will be time enough for her to invest the tithes 
and offerings in observatories, dissecting rooms, moot courts, and 
experimental farms. 

Tiiougli the Church has no proper motive nor any means she can 
consistently use to endow the University, it does not follow that 
the University must or can be unchristian, for her very office and 
occupation are the discovery and inculcation of trath. To ignore 
Christianity, she must ignore history, and banish literature. She 
may, and even ought to teach all the sciences which underlie the 
clerical profession, but she can no more undertake to teach denomi- 
national peculiarities, than to recognize thetluusand Msms, 'pathies, 
and 'ologies which claim a connection with other professions. 

There are two great moving social forces— politics a.:d religion. 
They alone aggregate and move men in masses to do i:reat things. 
We have seen that religion has no call to found the University, nor 
ought she to spare the means. No argument is needed to show 
that individual men cannot be depended upon to perform such a 



26 

service for the public. We can applaud our Vassars, and Cornells, 
our Packers and Peabodys, and honor ourselves in calling down 
benedictions upon them, but v^e cannot compel their beneficence, 
nor can we postpone the University until some public-spirited mil- 
lionaire comes down with the needful millions. 

There remains then but one resource. The State, the Common- 
wealth, the sovereign people in their organized political capacity? 
must found the University. 

I do not care to insist that the State is bound to endow the Uni- 
versity for the same reason we use to justify her interference in pri- 
mary education, viz : that University education is absolutely essen- 
tial to the existence and preservation of free institutions. I am con- 
tent merely to urge that University education is essential to the 
well-being, rather than to the being of the State; and this granted 
our case is made. 

What then can the University do for the State? First of all she 
can form the head and crown of our s)^stem of schools, sending her 
life-giving influence to its remotest fibres. The University should 
be the great Normal School for teachers of High Schools, Acade- 
mies and Colleges. The University, by refusing its degrees and 
honors to illiterate and unworthy candidates can not only raise the 
standard of scholarship in all the schools, but can elevate the profes- 
sions from the low condition into which they have confessedly fallen. 
And there is another consideration, which ought to be mentioned here- 
The University in organizing colleges of medicine and law, owes it 
to the people not merely to instruct the few to heal diseases, 
and manage suits at law, but to teach the many how to keep well* 
and out of litigation. 

The University will accumulate and maintain a i^reat 
Library, to which all citizens can resort for complete infor- 
mation on any useful subject. Next to the instruction, the 
library is the great interest nf the University. Mr. Carlyle speak- 
ing to the youth of Edinburgh University said to them in his quaint 
way, "The main use of Universities in the present age is that, after 
you have done with all your classes, tlie next thing is a collection of 
books, a great library of good books, which you proceed to study and 
to read." To such a library could resort not only the scholar, and 
the learned author, but the historian, the statistician, the legislator, 

*The time is not distant when a Department of Public Health, will be established in aU Universi- 
f.es, which will teajh all that ca i be knowa as to the causes ol' epidem'cs. the Sanitary condition 
and control of cities, hospitals asylums, prisons, school buildings, dwellings, &c. 



27 

the erlitor, the manufacturer and the inventor to consult those works 
which are beyond reach of private means. 

Next, the [Jniversitj will collect and arrange a museum of his- 
tory, natural history, and art. It is difficult in a new country to 
appreciate the i^alue and importance of such collections. We are 
too easily misled into thinking of the museum as a mere " curiosity 
shop." The museum is the perfection and climax of object-teaching. 
One glance at a fossil skeleton, the sight of a piece of coral, a trilo- 
bite, or a fern from the coal-beds gives to the young geologist an 
insight not to be won from volumes of reading. It you wish your 
young machinist to comprehend the steam engine, show him one in 
operation. Waste no useless talk to inexperienced youth upon the 
beauties of fine art, but hang up "the Transfiguration," bring forth an 
Etruscan vase, unveil the marble form of that Gladiator of the Cap- 
itol, '' butchered to make a Roman holiday." 

Another function of the University is to prosecute those scientific 
researches and make those costly experiments in the arts for which 
private investigators lack the means ; such experiments for instance, 
as those of Lawes and Gilbert upon the nutrition of plants. We 
purchase a telegraph, the photograph, a new motor, the spectroscope, 
the luclfer match, or chloroform cheaply at the price of fifty years 
of seemingly fruitless labratory work. Chloroform alone pays for 
all the money ever expended in scientific researches. To take a 
case nearer home ; if the expenditure of say $20,000 could result in 
discovering but one species of the apple, sure to thrive in Minnesota, 
no one would call that money ill spent. Closely connected with 
this function is another : that of stimulating invention and patroniz- 
ing inventors. Let it never be forgotten when giving to James 
Watt, the immortal benefactor of his race, that applause he so richly 
deserves, to celebrate also that University of Glasgow which shel- 
tered him, and those her learned and generous professors who 
appreciated his gifts, assisted hini through his struggles, and without 
jealousy rejoiced in his triumphs. The University should be the 
natural resort and resource of the inventor, for counsel and for infor- 
mation. Were the University ready to do her full work here, there 
would, I ])e]ieve, be less money squandered in patent right hum- 
bugs, and fewer brains added with ''perpetual motion." 

As a part of her practical scientific work, the University will 
build and operate the Observatory, in which will be made perpetu- 
al observations on the weather, the magnetic forces, and on the heav- 
enly bodies. And I cannot think of any more practical use to 



wliicli her means can be put. Take as an illustration of the possible 
results of metereological researches, the great^discovery of the laws 
of circular storms, the knowledge of which enables the modern 
navigator to steer clear of them with almost unerring precision. The 
Observatory is needed not alone for its practical uses, but for its 
stimulating influence upon all the departments of science, especially 
upon the mathematics and the physical sciences. 

The keeping of correct time is no trifling matter. The movements of 
railway trains, the sittings of courts and legislvtive bodies, the sessions 
of the schools,the very titles to our homesteads,the daily routine of our 
mills and factories, the wages of our laborers require the maintain- 
ance of an absolute standard of time. The great clock of the heav- 
ens alone can furnish that, and the astronomer only can read its 
radiant dial-plate. I would therefore require the University astron- 
omer, by means of telegraphic wires to drop a signal bail, daily at 
noon, atop of every court house and public building in the State. 

I see now that I can only enumerate without detail several other 
particulars of the account made up by the University against the 
State. The state needs not merely intelligent voters ; she more 
and more requires with the advance of time, and multiplication of 
interests, experts in legislation, in the administration of public 
affairs, and for her military defense. It will, I think, presently 
become apparent that this need is so imperative that the States gen- 
erally will be forced to provide means wnereby, and places in which 
instruction may be had in such sciences as Political Economy, Inter-' 
national Law, the Science of Government, Parliamentary Usage, the 
keeping of Public Accounts and the Science and Art and War. We 
cannot much longer run the risk of private institutions, whether 
secular or religious, prosecuting thoroughly and practically these 
subjects. Already we h ve a great accumulation of political ques- 
tions — questions of suffrage, of tariffs, of railroads, of schools, of 
finance, which are too big and too complicated to be handled by 
any who do not make them a special study. It is true the Univer- 
sity could teach nothing finally nor dogmatically upon such ques- 
tions, but she could train up generations of men to be their own 
teachers, and to verse themselves in those matters. It is already clear- 
ly impossible for us to preserve, civil institutions so simple as to be 
within the easy comprehension of all citizens ; and since we must 
trust to experts, let us have the best. As to the importance of 
keeping alive the military spirit of the people, and the practic ^ of 
arms, I need only point for assurance to the condition in which 
many of our States found themselves at the outbreak of the late civil 



29 

war. The State University, with a triiliiia; expense of tinic niul 
money, can secure. to the whole l)0(ly of its students a fair knowl- 
edge of the use of arms, anvl can thoroughly instruct some portion 
of them in tlie various branches of tlie military science. The result 
would be that, should there unfortunately occur the need, many hun- 
dred young men would soon be found ready and competent to oi'gan- 
ize and command companies and hattaliono. To render such 
instruction in any high degree profitable, however, the University 
must in some manner derive authoi-ity from the State to enforce, so 
far as may be necessary, military discipline. And there may be a 
question wliether such kind of discipline is consistent with the 
University idea. 

It nuxy be expecting too much of the near future, but it is still 
gratifying to hope, that it mny give to the American states and 
nation, some such system as that already long in use in England, 
and as proposed in Congress by Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, a 
system which would recpire candidates for public preferment to 
prove their fitness for the offices aspired to by passing a thorough 
examination before an imprrtial board. Still the tiine may come lor 

^ 4;- v^ u maybe wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes to the truth." 

If ever that day shall come when the State shall make such 
demands upon those whom she calls into her service, they in turn 
will require with a certain sort of justice that she furnish the instruc- 
tion. If she do this at all she must do it generously ^indfreeli/^ for 
there must never be in a republican country any position of honor 
or trust to which the humblest citizen may not aspire. 

^Such are some of the services the University can render to the 
State, and are so many reasons why she is bound to interfere in its 
behalf. 

An institution which undertakes such offices MUST BE RICH. 
And here we have all additional claim upon the public. The very 
vastness of the concern exceeds private means and corporate 
authority. Harvard University, by far the wealthiest academic 
corporation in America, is to-day asking her alumni to increase her 
endowment by a sum sufficient to yield an additional income of 
$250,000. 

Cornell University rich in prospect, is poor to-day with an income 
of about $75,000. Michigan Ui.iversity spends $80,000 a year. 

*A member of the University Faculty is maturing and will shortly be prepared to propose a plan 
by which the University will be charged with a survey of the State, to embrace not merely ita 
topography, and geology, but its hydrography, its botany, its entomology. A partof the plan will be 
to furnish scientific employment for a number of years to young men pursuing scientifio 
studies at the University. 



80 

The University of Berlin expends yearly over $200,000 in gold, 
upon a scale of prices far below American rates. 

The revenue of Yale College, is not a small one, and yet 
this is what a Yale professor says in the cohimns of the " New 
Englander " for April 1869 : " The professors are not more than 
half paid, * * ^- the salaries not more than half 
sufficient to support a family respectably in New Haven. "^ * * 
The Library fund is miserabh inadequate * ^ -^ The corps of 
instructors ought to be doubled. * * ''^* Yale College is wofully 
poor. * ''^ ^ She has not a dollar to buy books." ^ * * * 
Such is the financial condition of one of our oldest, best-managed, 
and most popular American colleges. And what is the cry that comes 
up from every college large and small in the land, but " money ! 
money ! ! money ! ! ! " The religious press rings with appeals for 
gifts and endowments, alumni of colleges pour in large ofterings 
of love and gratitude, noble men and women dying, bequeath rich 
legacies to favorite institutions, but still the cry is " money, more 
money!" 

There is as I have said, but one resource. The State must endow 
the University, and if the State will have the University in its full 
proportions, let her first count the cost, and take the million for her 
unit. If the State ought endow the University she must needs con- 
trol so great a concern ; and such control, if wisely conditioned, is 
just now one of the great needs of the University. To properly 
govern a great academic community, composed of persons rather 
loosely connected with the local society, requires an authority great- 
er than any corporate body can of itself confer. The students of 
the State University, beneficiaries to a great degree of the State, 
may be regarded as ijeing, in a sort, engaged in the public service, 
enjoying the public bounty upon condition of, and only during good 
behavior. We build reform schools and penitentiaries for 
vicious and incorrio^ible youth. The State University will have no 
motive for retaining young persons of evil example either upon 
financial or social considerations. 

The University needs public authority to sanction and dignify her 
decrees, and other certificates of meiit. It is not necessary to enter 
uj)on a discussion of the causes which of late years have brought 
college degrees into low estimation, one may abnost say, into 
actual contempt. The fact is notorious and undeniable. The 
State University, not depending for her support upon the 
tuition money of her students, nor dreading the censure of unsuc- 



31 

cessful cfinclidates and their friends, may stand firmly by lier rule of 
grantinfifVo diploma wincir does not mean just what it says. Let 
her stand by tliat rule, and the time will come Avhen alumni w^ill 
write with pride the name of their Alma Mater after the initials of 
their degrees. Tlie diploma will be a passport to employment and 
j>(»cial ])osition, and not, as now, to be hid away with the manuscripts 
oi old colleges themes. 

As to the means throu'h whiVli the State will exert her influence 
and authority, that question has already been for us wisely decided. 
Her authority has been vested by law in n, board of responsil>le 
commissioners. There is sa ety in such an assignment. The gov- 
erning body of a great academic institution must possess a degree of 
permanence not so necessary for a legislature, and must be separa- 
ted so for as possible from the influences and inteifercLces of parti- 
san politics. 

In the hands of the Board of Regents is or ought to be, reposed 
by law, all the power necessary to the execution of their great trust. 
But since it is clearly impossible that such a board can remain in 
permanent session, attending constantly to the aflTairs of the Institu- 
tion, their ailh')i-iry must be delegated in some proper form to such 
persons as are employed by them to bj permanently on duty ; that 
io. to ^''''"President and Faculty of the University, who being large- 
ly rnd immediately responsible to the public for its success or failure 
must have a control commensurate with such responsibility. There 
will, therefore, grow up in time a body of statutes deflning the duties 
and powers of all concerned. Some powers however a Board of 
Regents cannot possibly delegate. The vitally important matter of 
the finances must always remain in their hands, because the people 
will hold them, and not others responsible for the honorable 
management ol the University funds. 

Another duty which they cannot devolve is, the exceedingly deli- 
G'X'e < i;e of selecting the instructors. The instruction, be it remem- 
bered, is the tii'!?t, great, pre-eminent concern of the University, and 
that by which it must stand or fall. There ai*e reasons 
why the selection of a University professor is a more delicate 
and aitiicult ta^k than any other the Board will be called 
up()n to perform. The University professor is no drill-mas- 
ter of boys, no mere gi-ammarian, no mere scientific showman. Uq 
is first of all a teacher. lie is also a scholar and an inves- 
tigator. He is an enthusiast in his own calling, absolutely 
wedded to it, and ''forsaking all others, will keep himself only unto 



32 

it." He is no adventurer, turning liis hand now to this trick now to 
that as he finds the one or the other to pay the better. In fact he must 
be a man wlio, like Professor Agassiz, "cannot afford to make 
money." Such men, when, by good fortune they are found, deserve 
a pecuharly tender and liberal regard, such as tliat which Cicero 
claimed for his Greek poet. They are men who prepare 
themselves for a kind of work lor which the demand is limited and 
precarious. The college professor, thrown upon the world, is at a 
great disadvantage compared with men whose days and nights have 
not been given to books and the pen. There will be no duty, then, 
so dehcate and embarrassing as the selection of the Faculty. This 
duty however will grow lighter hereafter, when the ranks of the 
instructors can be recruited from the alumni. 

I have spoken of the University as she will be ; as an ideal to be 
realized long after all who are gathered here to-day shall have ceased 
from the studies of earth and passed to the great examination day 
above. Building for the future we will lay broad and solid foundations 
for the structures our posterity shall rear. But as we build for the 
present also, and build in part, we firit will found and arrange those 
departments of the most immediate and practical use. It will be 
the part of wisdom to teach jirst those {sciences and arts by which 
we may subdue the prairie and the forest, bridge our great rivers, 
utilize the powers and forces of nature, diversify industry,and multiply 
the kindly fruits of the earth, before we lavish our means upon gal-- 
leries of painting or musical conservatories. The plow, the loom, 
and the anvil, must precede the pencil, the chisel, and the musical di- 
rector's baton. I have said the University is catholic, knowing 
no favorite pursuits, but welcoming, fostering all. 

But it may happen that the University may be made an almoner 
and trustee of funds, appropriated to the cultivation of some special 
science, or for the benefit of a particular ci-aft or profession. Assum- 
ing the office of trustee she can do nothing less than execute sacred- 
ly her trust. The assignment by the legislature of Minnesota of 
the funds which are to accrue from the sale of lands granted by the 
general government to endow institutions in the interest of the 
industrial classes to this University, I suppose to constitute such a 
trust Nothing I can say here could increase the confidence which 
is felt by the people and their legislators in this gov^erning body, 
made up of men not strangers to you, nor to your State, not with- 
out successful experience in miUtary, civil and business life; and not 



33 

without applause for a sagacious and honorable administration of 
the atfai s of this University. 

There are two things, however, which I may do. The one, to 
counsel to patience. Rome was not built in a day; nor can the agri- 
cultural and mechanical college, a novel kind of academic work, be 
brought to perfection in this new State, in any short period. Tlie 
other thing is to remind all concerned that this magnificent land 
grant was made not merely for the technical instruction of the 
industrial classes, but for their liberal culture ; made " in order," 
Bays the act, " to promote the liberal and practical edu- 
cation of the industrial classes." In the light of this fact, every 
blow that has been struck here, every stone that has been laid 
should bj reckoned as in bona tide falfillmerit of the .trust. And 
therefore, this honorable board of Regents migiit in all sincerity say 
to the farmers and artisans of Minnesota, "The doors of your Uni- 
versity stand open ; her instructors, are ready in their places ; 
send hither your youth, and they sh;dl be taught those things 
they need to learn, without money and without price." 

I desire here to allude to a matter connected with this subject 
which, I think, will deserve and presently will receive your atten- 
tion. The act of 1862 granting lands for agricultural colleges appor- 
tioned them according to the number of senators and representa- 
tives from each state at that time. Now the census of 1 870 will 
very much change the ratio of representation among the states. 
Some of the new states, Minnesota among them, will, I suppose, 
have doubled their population since the census of 1860. The ques- 
tion then arises, was not that apportionment an unequal one, and 
unjust to the new states ? 

]S'ew York State with an area of 46,000 square miles, takes 990,- 
000 acres. Minnesota with her 83,000 square miles of territory, 
receivesl 20,000; that is, Minnesota having nearly double the acreage 
of New York, gets less than one-eighth as much land. It is a 
fair question, whether there ought not to be made an equalization of 
this land grant upon some fair basis ? 

But it is high time I beg pardon of the ladies who have fiv^red 
us with their presence here, for not having alluded to the " woman 
question" as related to the University. It is one which I knew a 
great deal more about ten years ago than I dare say now. Still it 
does not in manner vex nor embarrass me, because I know that 
nothing happens by chance, and that neither men nor women only 
make history ; and because, presuming that the people of Minne- 



34: 

eota mean that there shall be an University here, not in name only, 
but in fact, I see that some of the difficulties attending the^ man- 
agement of mixed schools ought not here to present themselves. 
Such difficulties accumulate not in the assembly hall and recitation 
room, but in the boarding house ; and their number and magnitude 
eeem to depend very much upon circumstances of place, and the 
age and condition of the pupils. 

Thus, for instance, the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the 
city of San Francisco reports decided advantages resulting from the 
late complete separation of the sexes in the schools of that city. On 
the other hand we have in the country at least one institution that 
for twenty years or more has been steadily doing the thing which 
60 many wise and cunning educators have argued could not be done. 
I mean Oberlin College, within whose walls are gathered to-day 
nearly 1200 youth of both sexes and various ages. President Fair- 
child declared lately in a public address before a convention of 
teachers, that the first case of a scandalous nature had yet to occur 
in that institution. 

Such confficting examples clearly indicate that no solution of the 
troublesome problem has yet been reached which all can acquiesce 
in, and which reaches all latitudes and longitudes. We shall be wise, 
if vratching closely the signs of the times, and the demands made 
upon us by the people, we wait patiently, working the while faith- 
fully, for a system to grow from our own soil and native to our own 
skies. 

There is, however, this consideration worthy perhaps of notice 
here. The University is not founded nor operated in the interest of 
any class of men, nor of any one art. It exists for the benefit of 
society, not merely for that of individuals, whether male or female. 
It knows not male nor female, "Barbarian, Scytliian, bond nor free." 
The doors of its auditoria, its labratories, its library, stand open to 
all worthy comers ; that is, to all persons of good fame, who prove 
themselves competent to hear and receive its lessons. Neither sex, 
then, nor any craft or condition may with justice demand the insti- 
tution of privileges special to it. 

Were we now to sum up and conclude by saying, let all these 
things be, and be done, and the University is secure, we siiould be 
saying very much less than is necessary. Costly and magnificent 
buildings, a princely library, a vast museum, an unrivalled equip- 
ment of apparatus, labratories, observatories, workshops, nurseries, 
orchards, fish-ponds, farms and gardens, build, gather and stock 



a 



35 

them all upon a scale of imperial lavishness, and you might not 
have a successful University. You might concentrate here the 
rarest eloquence, the profoundest learning, the acutest dialectics of 
the civilized world, and yet be as far from it. There are needed 
eyes to see, and ears to hear, hands to work and brains to think. 
Any account of the University which leaves its undergraduate stu- 
dents out, is a very beggarly account. Indeed, undertaking to teach 
all those things which its students desire to learn, it will inevitably 
take on its character, to some extent, from them. If they come here 
with mere empirical, catch-penny notions, desiring only to carry away, 
as soon as possible a diploma which will license them to prey upon the 
bodies, souls, and property of their fellow men, the University will 
very soon become a mere curiosity shop and scientific limbo ; good 
learning will desert her ; true teachers and scholars will give her 
over to the dominion of quacks and charlatans. But let the young 
people who shall come up here, bring true hearts andwillini/ hands, 
resolved to " scorn delights and live laborious days ;" a generous 
desire to get, along with useful knowledge, what is better than 
knowledge, wisdom; a fervent wish to be good and do right in their 
day and generation ; !et them rightly value that wise and liberal 
foresight which has made learning as free as air to them ; then the 
University can live and flourish, and rise steadily and surely 
upward toward that lofty seat upon which she must finally rest. 

Young friends, students of this University, you hold in a manner 
its fate in your hands. Your faithfulness, your zeal and diligence, 
your honest toil for what is real wealth, will give us a good name, and 
fame which will call hundreds of others to take their places by your 
sides, and will encourage, yes, even compel those in authority to add 
to our means of instruction and your opportunities for learning. 

On the other hand, idleness, insubordination, even mere forgetful- 
ness without malice, may sink us to a position of contempt, and 
compel us to disband and retire from these halls in disgrace. And 
what is more, you are trustees and representatives of the youth 
of Minnesota for all time to come, and yours will be the blame, if 
through any fault ot yours they shall be deprived ot those their 
rights now in your trust. Do not wonder then, that your instruc- 
tors often exhort you to diligence, and command your obedience, 
knowing as they do, that by your doings or misdoings their work 
and influence are to be reckoned. Then do not think yourselves oi 
small account, since they do not. Wear proudly, young gentlemen, 
the University gray, and remember that wherever you wear it you 



36 

represent the University corps. See to it, each one, that you bring 
no slianie upon it. 

But the youth who shall in future by scores and hundred, 
resort hither, whence shall they derive such noble manners, 
such lofty zeal? Whence, but from the heart. s and homes 
of tlie land ? There can be no University worthy the name, 
without the interest, and co operation of \X\% 'people of this state. It 
will be vain that th y vote the millions of money that will be ..ced- 
ed to fully organize and furnish an American University, if they 
withhold their constant watchfulness and unfailing devotion. 

And here, if an j where outside our own walls, there will be lack. 
We are all so busy witb farms and our merchandize, we so doat 
upon our great mills, factories, and warehouses, we are so engrossed 
with cent per cent, and the fluctuations ot the exchange ; we fall 
down and worship so many '^ gods of gold and of silver, of brass, 
of iron, of wood and of stone," that we forget the higher life of 
men and of society, swamping the nobler duties and opportunities 
of the spiritual existence in a swelling sea of earthly troubles and 
triumphs. The state ot Minnesota has, or will have, a magnificent 
endowment for her common schools, but let her not trust to the 
balances in her treasury to give her such schools as she needs and 
may have, and which if the people will have them they must create 
them — breathing the very breath of life into them. They may not 
rely upon some beneficent monarch, by the gi ace of God their born 
ruler, to bestow upon them ready-made, the means and machinery 
of education. They must themselves personally and collectively 
interfere and co-operate. But let them trust vainly to their princely 
fund, and go to sleep leaving demagogues, " tinkers, rowdies and 
snobs " to manipulate it, and they may curse the day it came to 
them. Eternal vigilance is the price not of liberty alone, but of all 
the blessings winch flourish beneath and around it. The people 
then, must build, endow, and forever sustain by their unabating 
care the University ; and it would seem that a people forever free 
from any heavy burden of taxation for the support of elementary 
schools, were in a peculiar manner and degree bound to foster and 
develop those institutions for higher education, so necessary to stim- 
ulate and supplement them. The existence of this great endow- 
ment can never form any just excu.^e to cease from their interest in, 
and their contributions to good learning, but furnishes the best 
argument why, leaving the foundation so broadly and generously 
laid, they should go on to perfect the structures based upon it. I 



37 

think it safe to say that no political community in the world has 
ever held such vantage ground as that occupied by the State of 
Minnesota to-day. Upon a clean sheet she can write a few words, 
which will give her within the lifetime of these youth here, a sys- 
tem of schools such as the world has never seen. I can teil you what 
these words are: *" Divide your resources for primary education, 

COMBINE THEM FOR HIGHER EDUCATION." Carrj^ the COmmOU SCllOol tO 

every village and cross road, to reach and illuminate every house- 
hold in the land. Build some high schools, and academies (col- 
leges, as I have called them,) but not too many. Found but one 
University, for it is not the UNi-versity unless it be one. 

You have your choice as yet between the one, great, rich, free, popu- 
lous, cosmopolitan University which shall be your chief pride and j(>y, 
and the dozen or more petty, starveling, ill-appointed affairs, in which 
as a people you will have no common interest. And you can t dve 
your choice between educating your artizans and professional men 
here, on your own soil, and sending them to Yale, to Harvard, t3 
Ann Arbor or Madison ; for depend upon it, whatever you may 
think about it, the youn^ men and women are going w^here the 
brains are, and the means of instruct on fullest and freeest. 

The University then, is. not merely from the people, but for the 
people. True it will put bread into no man's mouth directly, nor 
money in his palm. ]N either the rains nor the sun hine do that, 
but they warm and nourish the springing grass, and ripen the har- 
vest. So higher education, generous culture, scholarship, literature, 
inform, inspire, and elevate communities. Minnesota will become a 
great and rich commonwealth. Her rare, bracing, salubrious, but not 
too genial climate is bringing here a yjopulation of men who expect 
to work for their living. Shut up in-doors during the long, though 
not dreary winters, in workshops and around the firesides, our peo- 
ple must by and by become thoughtful, serious, studious, inventive. 
And though the owners of your soil, and the lorest>, the proprietors 
of your railways and factories will gather imperial fortunes, there 
will yet be richer men here than they ; rich poor men, who landless 
and moneyless, will win for you new victories over nature, delight 
and Instruct you with the products ol genius, and whose names will 
be the pioud heritage of future generations long after Dives and his 
palaces mingle in undistinguished dust. I mean no sentimental 
depreciation of material prosperity. Wealth is the inevitable portion 
of diligence and virtue. Only let men who grow rich in in worldly 

*Hon. Andrew D. White, President of Cornell University. 



38 

gear, not forget to grow "rich toward God/' We found tlie 
American University, with a double purpose ; the increase of mate- 
rials wealth and comfort, and the cul ure and satisfaction of the 
spirit. Let that double object, as summed up by the Psalmist of old 
be the one gloiious end of our efforts and our prayers : 

" That our sons may grow up as the young plants, and that our 
daughters may be as the polished corners of the temple ; 

That our garners may be full of all manner of store ; that our 
sheep may bring forth thousands, and ten thousand in our streets ; 

That our oxen may be strong to labour ; that there be no decay, 
no leading into captivity, and no complaining in our streets ; 

Happy are the people who are in such a case, yea blessed are the 
people who have the Lord for their God." 



IMPROMPTU ADDRESS 

OF THE 

Hon. mark H. BUNNELL, 

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION FOR THE STATE OF MINNESOTA. 



I do not think it well to mar exercises so intensely interesting as 
the present have been, by any impromptu remarks. The able and 
exhaustive inaugural to which we have just listened gives no occa- 
sion for such. 

We are assembled, fellow citizens, to take part in the opening 
ceremonies of a State University. Its infancy, this day, terminates, 
and the period of its distinctive collegiate existence begins. Who 
can fail to hope and pray that the University may have a career 
grandly useful in the cause of sound and liberal learning ? 

During tliese exercises I have more than once thought how much 
of destiny, as it were, hung upon the present hour. Let me make, 
in a few sentences, one or two points. 

From year to year, we trust and believe, young men, and women 
too, will come to this seat and home of learning from the various 
towns of the State, impelled by strong cravings for higher intellect- 
ual training and instruction, to whom wealth has denied any assist- 
ance. They may be poor, may be clad in homespun, may eat of 
coarse food, may, indeed, spread their own tables and do their own 
cooking. I make of the students now here, and of those who shall 
come after you, this one request — that such students as I have de- 
scribed be as welcome to your classes and societies as those to whom 
fortune in her kindness has been more generous. Let not caste for 
an hour have sway in this University. Let moral and intellectual 
worth alone iix the status of each student here. Honor, then, those 
who shall struggle, shall battle with obstacles. They may be those 
who shall give especial fame to their Alma Mater. 

One other point, let me make: The students now here are clothed 
with great responsibilities. They will have much to do in shaping 
the customs of the University. I beg of you, students, to crush at 
once and forever all ^attempts to inaugurate or perpetuate any dis- 
honorable, unworthy custom. Let not hazing nor any such unmanly 
tricks have a being or name here. They are without honor. There 
can be nobler and far more precious reminiscences of college life 
than such as these can give. 



40 

The University of Minnesota is now open to the youth of the 
State. May they come to it from every county, find cuhurejvand 
then return to their several localities fitted for lives of eminent suc- 
cess in the professions and the trades. May thousands of them 
come hither, and come as long as our heloved State shall exist. 
May they all accept the motto of the President, that the Diploma 
here acquired shall be a truthful expression, an evidence of real 
merit. 

May the Alumni of this University be proud of her. As from 
year to year, through the generations, they shall celebrate her Com- 
mencement Day, may they find her vigorous and glorious. Amid 
their festive rejoicings, may they proudly and gratefully adopt the 
sentiment of the Latin poet : 

" In freta dumfluvii current, dum montibus umbrae 
Lustrabunt convexa, polus dum sidera pascet ; 
Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt." 



LETTER OP GOV. MARSHALL. 

St. Paul, Mmis-., Jan. 27, 1870. 
President Wm. W. Folwell^ State University : 

Dear Sie— In reply to yours asking for a copy of my remarks 
on the occasion ot your inauguration, I would say that they seem 
to me not worthy of perpetuating in the published proceedings. I 
had no thought ol being called on to say anything, and I shall now 
have difficulty in recalling what I did say. I spoke ot the auspic- 
ious beginning made of the University courses proper ; of the suc- 
cess which the Regents felt assured had blessed their efforts in secur- 
ing an able faculty ; of the wise and exhaustive discussion of the 
prominent questions relating to University education to which we 
had listened in your masterly address. I congratulated the people 
of the State on the possession of an institution which gave to our 
youth facilities for the highest educational training. I spoke also of 
the long and discouraging years that had preceded this consumma- 
tion ; that the night of doubt and uncertainty of the State Univer- 
sity was now past, and hereafter the light of prosperity would shine 
unceasingly ; that, with the additional endowment of two townships 
of land due the State under the Act of 1857, which I was sure 
would be confirmed by the present Congress, the resources of the 
University would be ample for all time. 

Yery truly yours, 

Wm. R. Marshall. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 

ST. ANTHONY, MINNESOTA, 

February ist, 1870. 
Sir: 

Your attention is respectfully called to the within " Proposed Plax for 
THE Organization of the University of Minnesota," in the hope that your engagements 
will allow you to return an opinion upon it at an earl}' date. The object of this circular 
letter is to obtain the advice and information necessary to intelligent action. Minnesota 
is still a young State. Her system of schools, public and private, is still in its formative 
stage. It is thought that the University ought to undertake such work as needs to be done 
now, accepting such material as the schools can now furnish, awaiting her development 
along with that of the general educational system of the State. Any suggestions upon the 
general subject of University organization and administration will be thankfully received. 
I am, Sir, 

Very Respectfully, 

Your Obedient Servant, 

WILLIAM W. FOLWELL. 



( "There shall be established in the XJuiversity of Minnesota, 
,' five or tri'^re Colleges or Departments ; that is to say, a Depart- 
! nicnt of Elementary Instruction ; a CoUege of Science, Litera- 
] ture, and the Arts : a College of Agriculture and the Mechanic 
I Arts, including Military Tactics ; a CoUege or Department of 

Law; and also a College or Department of Medicine." [Laws 

of Minnesota, 1865.] 



" * * * to teach such branches of learning as are related 
to AgricultiTre and the Mechanic Arts, in such manner as the 
legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to 
promote the liberal and practical education of the indn3trial 
classes in the several pursuits and professions of Ufe, without 
excluding other scientific and classical studies, and : includ- 
ing miUtary tactics." [Act of Congress, granting lands for Agri- 
cultural Colleges, 1862.] 



PROPOSED PLAN 

FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. 



A three years preparatory department has been in operation since 1866. Twenty students, most of whom liave 
passed tlirongh this Department, are now pursuing tlie studies of Freshmen in Science or Arts. 

It is proposed to drop, as soon as may be practicable, tlie first year of tliis Preparatory course, and to add to tlie 
two remaining years, other two years, corresponding to tlie Freshman and Sophomore years of our ordi,nary Colleges, 
thus forming a Department to be called " The Collegiate Departmbxt," of which the prominent features shall 
be these, viz : 

1. Two or more parallel courses of general scientific and classical studies, designed to ]3repare students either to 
enter one of the professional schools, or the Higher Academic course of the Uviversit^'. 

2. These courses to be open to both sexes alike. /'i'l/Ct^A^S-''^ C^'tc^^j 

3. A thorough system of discipline, by means of marking system, military drill, gymnastics &c. 

4. All students to be instructed in those principles of Agriculture (including Horticulture,) the Mechanic Arts . 
and Hygiene, which every " educated man" or woman needs to know. 

■5. No degrees to be conferred at the end of these courses, but only a certificate of fitness to proceed with some 
proper University course. 

6. A shorter course of scientific studies for students preparing to enter the Colleges of Agriculture and Medicine. j^-« 

7. Tuition in this Department to be FREE, ij'^^ii^it^^^^^^^ 

-/- 8. Qualifications for admis.sion : Reading, Writing, Spelling, Arithraetjjc.and elements of Algebra, English 
Grammar and Geography. After years' Latin Grammar and Physiology, Age, 14 years. 

9. STUDIES.— Mathematics,— Algebra, (ieometry. Trigonometry, Mensuration (includes Surveying,) and 
Analytical Geometry. 

Sciences.— Chemistry, Physics, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology, Geology, Physiology, Geography, and 
Astronomy. Of these the Xomenclature and Elements. 

Languages.— English, (including Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic,) Latin, Greek, French, German, Scandina- 
vian, (any one or any two, if the teaching force can be made strong enough.) 

Other Exkkcises.— Military tactics. Gymnastics and Calisthenics, Drawing, Elocution, &c. Lectures on Agri- 
culture and the Mechanic Arts, and Hygiene. 

The theory of this Collegiate Department is, that the student having successfully pursued one or other of its pre- 
scribed courses, will be suitably prepared to enter the " CoPege of Science, Literature, and the Arts," or the Col- 



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ege (if that profession to which he intends devoting his life. It is too much to ask now in a new country, that can- 
didates for Agriculture, Law, ^Medicine, or Business, shall generally have taken the degrees of Bachelor in Arts. 

It is not thought necessary to enlarge upon the details of the organization of the professional and technical schools, 
tl.o number and kinds of which must depend upon the means of the University and the public demands. The 
llrst of them to be organized wi'l be that of "Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts." The Higher Academic Depart- 
ment will correspond nearly with the Junioj: and Senior years of the American Colleges, excepting that there shall 
be entire academic freedom in the selection of sfrwflies-. Xo deffrees shall be conferred except after successful examina- 
tion and that to some extent upon subjects upon which no direct instruction shall have been given. 

It is a part of the plan that from year to year, some branch or branches shall be dropped off the lower end of the 
Collegiate courses, so that at length, the whole Department, having been relegated to the schools below, shall " expire 
by limitation," leaving the federated classical, scientific and professional schools of the University' proper. In fact 
the Collegiate Department is intended to be a model " Secondary School." 

The following figure will present a synopsis of the principal outlines of the proposed plan : 




i."bridged Course. 
Scientific Course. 



Classical Course. 

Mixed Course. 

COIiLEGIATE DEPAKTMEKT. 




B.A- 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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